Air Doll

In this quirky riff on the Galatea myth, Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking, Maborosi) adapts a manga by Yoshiie Gouda about a blow-up sex doll that comes alive one morning after its owner leaves for work. The incandescent Doona Bae (The Host, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) gives a daring performance as the toy-turned-woman, whose movements gradually become more fluid and whose face reflects more age and experience as she meets a series of loners on the streets of Tokyo. The perspective of a heroine who can expire from the smallest puncture allows Kore-eda to consider the Japanese preoccupation with beauty and the ephemeral, and he finds exquisite sadness everywhere from a birthday party to a curbside trash drop-off. In Japanese with subtitles.
ByAndrea Gronvall